


To Iuventius, by Catullus.

by fatsuffices (wrenchwench)



Category: Realm of the Elderlings - Robin Hobb
Genre: Genderfluid Fool, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Other, a rewrite of the scene in Tawny Man where fitz shows fool the charm that makes people like him, although that's not dealt with in this you gotta know THEY ARE GENDERFLUID, featuring fitz's inability to understand his own emotions, i'm not sorry robin hobb, neither of them are technically consenting to the touching but it doesnt go too far i promise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:26:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28182366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wrenchwench/pseuds/fatsuffices
Summary: "I stole a sweet kiss while you played, sweet Iuventius,one sweeter than sweetest ambrosia.Not taken indeed with impunity: for more than an hourI remember, I hung at the top of the gallows."the fitz and the fool have an altercation.the fitz and the fool have a discussion.
Relationships: FitzChivalry Farseer/The Fool
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	1. Chapter 1

_ ‘I saw Jinna today. She made this for me.’ I opened the collar of my shirt.  _

_ He stared, first at the charm, then up at my face. He seemed struck dumb. Then a wide and fatuous grin spread over his face. _

_ ‘It’s supposed to make people feel kindly towards me,’ I explained. ‘To counteract my grim appearance, I think, though she was not so unkind as to say that directly.’  _

_ He took a breath. ‘Cover it,’ he begged, laughing, and as I did so, he turned away from it. He walked almost hastily to the chamber window and looked out. ‘They are not tuned to my bloodlines, but that does not mean I am completely impervious against them. You often remind me that in some ways I am still very human.’ _

**_Hobb, Robin. Fool’s Errand (The Tawny Man Trilogy, Book 1) (p. 248). HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition._ **

I brought my hand up to my throat curiously. From his reaction it seemed as though the effect was quite obvious, although the others who had seen the charm thus far had not been so dizzied by it. I wondered if it was dangerous to wear around him. 

“Does it hurt you?” I asked, noting his hands trembling slightly against the window-sill. “I will not wear it again if it does.”

He shook his head, still laughing a little, but it seemed to me to be almost tinged with hysteria.

“It doesn’t hurt at all, Fitz. Quite the opposite.” 

I frowned and let my hand fall away from where it had been fingering the charm, letting it tumble out fully to lie on my shirt. I did not see the harm in showing it if it didn’t hurt him. “What does it feel like, then? I don’t understand your reaction, if it is only supposed to make people like me better. You’re shaking.”

I stepped forward, tugging a chair closer so he could sit, but before I could touch his shoulder to direct him he turned to face me, looking startled to see me so close. His eyes once more moved from my face, to my chest with the charm fully shown, then back to my face. I do not know if the thing that made the difference was my physical closeness or the fact that the charm had been half-hidden before, but before my eyes I saw his pupils expand, his cheeks flush, his lips part...

Then he surged forward and kissed me.

At first I was too stunned to move. His lips were cool against mine, and his hair, which he’d worn loose that day, swirled around our faces in the rush of air he’d pulled in his wake. He smelled good, as well, which gave me pause until I realised he was wearing some kind of scented oil behind his ears. His eyes, which had been open and almost blank, were now closed, and I could see the sweep of his lashes against his cheek. For a moment, everything was still.

His lips moved softly and he made a little noise as if he were in pain, and I jerked my head back, breaking the contact roughly. His arms had locked tight around my waist and he crowded me against the wall, his body flush to mine. I pushed at him, but found that he was stronger than I had remembered. He barely noticed my hands on his chest as he leaned forward, closing the gap once more. 

“Stop!” I said, sharply, “Stop, it is only the charm!”

He paid me no mind, his eyes still focused on my mouth.

“Fitz,” he said, and my mouth went dry. I had never heard that kind of tone from him before. He sounded husky, pleading. I closed my mind to the thought of women I had lain with, who had sounded just like him then, when they spoke to me in the darkness of the bedroom, but I could not turn away from the knowledge that though the paint he used was smearing, his mouth was as rosy as theirs, and his lips as sweet.

His tongue flicked out to wet his bottom lip and he said my name again, his fingertips digging into my back as he tugged at me. I struggled again, but weaker this time, telling myself it would be my head on the line if I bruised his face trying to get him to let me go. I was determined to get out of this situation without hurting him, if I could. His cheeks were still coloured, and it frightened me to see it, as his skin never seemed to blush otherwise.

I tried once more to appeal to him, thinking that if perhaps I reminded him of our seemingly disparate status he would come to his senses. “You must let me go, sir, or the servants will undoubtedly see us. You’re not yourself. Stop!”

This last exclamation was in response to his right leg, which had insinuated itself between my thighs. He leaned in once more and I turned my head to avoid his mouth, trying to think of a plan to deal with him. He did not seem to be too disturbed by my rejection, however, and instead he pressed his lips to where my pulse jumped in my throat. I waited tensely for him to lick or bite me, but instead he drew his nose up to bury it in my hair and drew a breath, scenting me. Shockingly, it was this that first drove a shuddering gasp from me, and he made a pleased noise.

“Fitz,” he said a third time, and finally kissed my throat.

“No,” I repeated, and shook my whole body from the shoulders down, hoping for him to step back. To my surprise, my shirtfront slid open, the multitude of tiny buttons having been cleverly undone by him without me noticing. He immediately tugged it off my shoulders, and I found that while he may have been vacant in some ways, in others he was as sharp as ever. The shirt was knotted round my wrists in short order, and for all my struggling I could not twist my way free without better leverage. 

The stone of the wall was rough on my back and I quickly found that any great movements scraped horribly at my shoulders and the backs of my arms. My captor leaned back at the waist, the better to survey his prize. His eyes were half-lidded, like a cat’s, and he seemed very pleased with himself. For my part, I tried not to squirm. I could not push into the wall at my back, and the only other way to go was forward, against his thigh, which still rode high against me. He was shorter than I but his torso more compact and his legs longer, so although he had to look up slightly to see my face, he had no trouble keeping himself in contact with me. 

Gently, so gently, he ran a single fingertip down from where my collarbones made a divot, all the way down the valley of my chest, between the muscles there, and further down still, over my navel. His finger stopped at the waistband of my leggings, and his eyes, which had followed along that torturous journey, flicked up to meet mine. My swallow was loud, in the silence.

“Please,” I said once more. I became vaguely aware that I was no longer quite sure what I was pleading for. “When you come to your senses… I do not want you to hate me.”

“But Fitz,” he said, smooth as silk, “I could never hate you. Not once in my life have I hated you, and I never will.”

And then he smiled at me, and I almost felt tears start in my eyes. I had not seen him smile at me thus in some time. Lord Golden’s smiles always held back - they were wide and pleasant, but they did not seem to reach his eyes. This smile, however, I had seen many times, although until that moment I had not realised it. He smiled at me as though I was the only thing he saw, and more, that I was the only thing he wished to see. I held his gaze, and after a long moment spent in contemplation of me, his eyes seemed friendlier than they had in the minutes past since he had been bewitched by the charm around my neck. Then he suddenly blinked and shook his head like a horse bothered by a fly. When he looked back up, he was no longer looking at my face, but at his hand, where his index and middle fingers had hooked themselves into my waistband. His thumb absently stroked back and forth on a bare inch of my stomach, and I felt a shiver as the tiny soft hairs all over my body stood on end. 

He was barely touching me, and yet my body responded readily, as if sensitised. I could not find a reason for it, try as I might at that time, and besides, my train of thought was cast aside as he leaned forward once more to press his face near mine. This time he simply rested his forehead against mine, his eyes downcast to bear witness, for as he pressed himself closer, his leg rose higher and ground against me, and helplessly I felt myself hardening. I could see the ghost of an entirely different smile on his lips, this time lascivious and wanting, his tongue once more darting out to leave them wet, and to my shock I imagined him lifting his head and kissing me again. I could not leave out the thought of his warm mouth against mine, although I tried to dismiss it. 

I thought perhaps the charm was affecting me, also, until a sneaking thought came;  _ perhaps it is not Jinna’s charm, but the Fool’s own charms - not carved from wood but held within him - that is what is causing this. You have known how he felt about you for years. _

Madly, I thought of Starling.  _ The Fool is a woman, and she is in love with you! _ Certainly he was no woman, but I could no longer deny his desires - and what was more, did I want to?

I felt him undo the top fastening of my leggings, the thin strips of tied leather giving way beneath his touch. Even with a glove on one hand, he was more dextrous than I. I pulled air between my teeth with a sharp hiss. If I was going to stop this, it would have to be soon. My breath was getting faster and shallower and my hands, trapped as they were, were trembling, and as he pressed the whole length of his body against mine, rolling his hips up against me, we both gave a low moan in unison.

“Fool,” I said, agonised. I was no longer sure of what I wanted, but I knew this was not what he would want for us. “Please.  _ Beloved. _ ”

I felt him shudder against me, and for a moment we were both still. Then, suddenly, I smelled blood - and his mouth was hot against my neck, wet and slick - and his teeth scraped - and then he jerked his head back sharply, and there was a clatter as the charm fell to the floor, the leather cord broken. He had bitten it in half. I stared at it where it lay, then looked up at him, and flinched.

His face was a study in misery. His mouth, which had been curled before in pleasure and no small amount of lust, was now pulled down, half open, horrified. He stepped away from me, first a small way, barely a hand’s breadth, and then in a rush he stumbled back, tripping over his own feet as he went. In the back of my mind, I thought that I had never seen him be clumsy before.

I stepped towards him, wanting to help him up, but I still could not free my hands. As I drew close to him, he threw up one hand from where he was still crumpled on the floor, and I saw his fingers tremble. He drew a choked breath.

“Please, Fitz. No closer.” 

I stopped. His hair had fallen over his face, and I could not see his expression, but already I could smell the salt of his tears, and beneath that, that same scent of blood. Frustrated, I struggled with the shirt violently until it tore enough for me to loose myself. I tossed it in the direction of my room and took a half step towards him, then froze.  _ No closer, _ he had said.

“Fool,” I said, helplessly, and my stomach twisted as he gave a sob in response. Until then, his tears had been silent, but no longer. Quiet though he was, seeing him curled in on himself on the floor, fists dragging at his long hair, was too much for me.

“Forgive me,” I said, and moved closer. I laid my hand on his shoulder and was shocked to feel him cringe away from me. “Fool-” I began, and then leaned back to avoid the furious whirl of his hair as he sat up and faced me, somehow managing to distance himself from where I had crouched to reach him. 

“Stop!” he cried out, and the plosive carried little specks of blood to spatter my outstretched hand. I drew it back, staring at the beads of red, then looked closer at his mouth, which was bleeding, although as soon as I saw it he turned away from me.

“Fitz,” he said, waveringly, “I - I will never be more sorry to have done anything, as long as I live. I will never be able to make up for this wrong.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” I said, standing. He hunched his shoulders and seemed to be staring at his own hands, perhaps remembering what they had so recently been touching. The strip of skin down my chest that he had caressed so lovingly felt like ice to me now. “Fool, please. Won’t you look at me?”

“Do not tempt me further, Fitz,” he said, and in those few words I felt the depth of his self loathing. “Leave me. Please. I - I wish to be alone. At least for a short while.”

Another of those shuddering breaths.

“Please,” he said, and I closed my eyes. He sounded desperate. I did not want to leave him, but he had always been solitary, and had needed his own space. Would it help him, for me to leave? 

“If that is what you want,” I said reluctantly.

“It is,” he said. “Chade wanted to see you. You should go to him.”

And so I went.


	2. Chapter 2

Trying to Skill in search of Dutiful kept me in Chade’s grasp until well past midnight, and waking again after the dream of chasing through a forest with a beautiful lover just past my grasp was more frustrating than it should have been. I made my way up the narrow stairs to Chade’s rooms and slumped against the wall there. He looked almost shocked to see me. 

“Galeton,” I relayed, “Prince Dutiful hunts near Galeton. That is as much as I can tell, just now.”

Chade jumped to his feet and clapped me on the shoulder delightedly.

“Excellent! I will prepare accordingly - Fitz, of course you must not stay awake. Here,” and he gestured over his shoulder, “take my bed.”

I gazed at it, so soft and welcoming, but something tugged at me. “No,” I said, “it’s alright. I’ll go back to mine. It’ll still be warm.”  
  
He nodded, already digging through a chest full of scrolls. I left, bidding him goodnight for a second time. We would talk more in the morning. Sleepy-eyed, I made my way back downstairs, feeling in the near-darkness for the little catches that would let me into my rooms. Under my questing fingertips, the little dip in the wall appeared, and I lifted the catch and pushed. The door gave way with a soft swish, and I stepped through and closed it.

The darkness of the room I entered was absolute. There were no candles to light it, although I knew I had left a new one burning, and it should not have guttered out so soon. I put one hand out to steady myself against the wall by my bedside, but instead found only a soft pile of fabric - too fine to be anything of mine. Baffled, I took a cautious step, and then another, finding far more space than I should. I was so exhausted that it took me until I heard a soft noise to my left that I realised that I was not in my own room at all. 

Swallowing, I raised the pile of fabric I still gripped to my nose and inhaled softly. It smelled of expensive perfume, and nothing else. This, to me, was proof that there was no other room I could be in. This was not a mistaken entry into some random noble’s rooms, though I almost wished it was. I had not gone far enough down the hidden corridor. 

I was, of course, in Lord Golden’s rooms.

Immediately I backed up and attempted to search the wall for the hidden clasp, but in my horror I had dropped the fabric, which caught on some trinket on its way to the floor, and even that small clink of wood against the stone seemed so loud in that velvety blackness that I knew at once that I had woken him. 

I stood still, facing the wall, and wished that he would simply dismiss it as coincidence and go back to sleep, leaving me to search for my way out, but I have never been a lucky man. I waited for him to light a candle or call out, but to my shock I felt barely a breeze behind me before he sank his hand into my hair and dragged my head back. The cold press of steel at my neck was oddly comforting. This, at least, was a position I had been in before.

“Who-” he said, then paused. I felt the hand in my hair move, tugging slightly, and I heard him take a breath through his nose. In the next instant the knife was snatched away from my neck and he was gone from me.  _ The scent of my hair _ , I thought. We were alike in stranger ways than I had realised. 

For a breath or so, neither of us moved or spoke. We simply stood, me staring at the wall, him staring at my back. Then I heard him sigh. Soft footsteps followed, and the swish of air that followed someone sitting heavily on a soft mattress. I turned my head to face him.

"I take it," he said, remarkably steadily, "that this was not deliberate."

"Not as such," I said, "although I was sorry to be away from you so long. I had planned to come back and talk to you after Kettricken and Chade were done with me, but they had me skill, and forbade me any elfbark. I went straight to bed when I returned."

"I see," he said. It was for all the world as if the afternoon had not happened. "And you got up in the night to urinate, of course, and your chamberpot was full, and you thought you'd use mine?"

I admit that perhaps it was my tiredness, but this seemed so immensely funny to me that I found I could not stop the laughter that escaped me, even long past when it should have petered out. I laughed so long and heartily that I was dizzied and fell to my knees, my side cramping with it, almost crying with merriment. After a time, he lit a candle to stare at me. 

"Fitz," he said, and I nodded, still breathing hard, to let him know I was paying attention. "I am glad that you can still find amusement in me."

"I'll always think you're funny," I said, wiping my eyes, "but honestly. I don't know what came over me. Fool, can we talk, even a short time, just now?"

At this, he shrugged. 

"We can talk. We can always talk. Whether we will say anything of substance is not guaranteed, but certainly yes, we can talk."

"Then," I said, and stood again, brushing off my leggings, "I wanted to say-"

I stopped. At my feet, next to a pile of soft fabric, the very same I had held shortly before, was Jinna's charm. I picked it up and watched his eyes follow it. In the low light of the candle, the yellow of his irises was luminous.

"You wanted to say?" he prompted, as if his gaze was not fixed on the carved beads and shapes that had so recently caused so much trouble. 

"I wanted to say," I started again, and stepped towards him, proffering the necklace far more boldly than I felt, "that none of what happened was your fault."

He blinked once, slowly, and reached out his hand to touch the dangling leather ties. They were uneven. I could see the ragged ends where he had bitten through, both to release it from my neck and to release himself from the enchantment of it.

"You fought it," I said, but he shook his head jerkily.

"Too little," he spat, "and too late, Fitz. I am ashamed of myself. No, that is not enough. I am disgusted. Ever have I reviled those who force themselves on others for bodily needs. This kind of attack, from me, upon you, is more than I can even imagine. Now, sitting in my bed, with you standing there, it feels like a bad dream. And yet, I know it was not. I remember all of it, Fitz. Every inch of you my hands defiled. Every bit of your skin I corrupted with my mouth. I wiped my lips over and over after you left and still I cannot rid my memory of the stolen taste of you, and what is worse, I do not even think that I want to!" He took a breath, and I saw that he was worrying at his lip with his teeth. "I am a monster," he concluded.

I was struck dumb by the force of his self-loathing. What could I say in the face of such hatred? I glanced around and noted that while eccentric and full of oddities, his room was usually impeccably tidy. Each thing had its place. Now there were jewelled earrings scattered over the floor, and the little box they had been in was lying broken under a table where it had been knocked. The fabric I had moved was his own shirt from that very afternoon and it had not been put away to be cleaned but instead had been left balled up and abandoned. His hair was tangled and the sleeves of his long bedrobe were damp with tears, spit, and snot. I suspected he had sobbed into them for some time. His face, too, was red and blotchy, and dirty from crying. As I looked closer, I could see that his bottom lip was badly split. This, then, was where the blood had come from earlier.

"You bit yourself," I said, and reached out to touch him unthinkingly. At the sight of my hand approaching, his expression grew even darker.

"I would do much worse to myself, Fitz, if it meant I never had to put you through that again."

"You didn't hurt me," I said, and he scoffed.

"As you well know, Fitz, being injured physically is not the only way to inflict pain on someone."

This threw me. We had both been hurt by others in ways that had nothing to do with cuts and bruises, it was true. Did my experience with the Fool that afternoon count as such? I withdrew my hand, noting both the disappointment and gratitude in his eyes as I did so, and tossed the charm onto his bedside table. I needed to think, and I would best do that with something to do with my hands. I turned away from the Fool in his bed and began to tidy up.

"Fitz," he said, despairingly, "please, just leave me. Go to bed. You shouldn't be in here with me. You should hate me."

I said nothing. The earrings were placed back into the box, although the broken lid would not stay shut. I put his shirt into the woven basket that a maid would collect to be cleaned. I went into a chest and found another nightrobe, and slung it over my arm. I found a washcloth, and tossed it onto a platter, upon which I put a pitcher of water and a bowl. Then I went over to him and placed these on his nightstand, and the robe on his bed.

"I will turn around," I said, and nodded to the robe. He looked up at me. His eyes were wide, and his mouth open a little. I was closer now than I had been before, and could see the swelling of his lip. I turned. For a moment there was silence, and then a rustle as he stood, slid off the dirtied robe, and tugged on the clean one. I waited until I heard him stop moving, and then turned, slow enough that he could stop me if needed, but he wasn't looking at me. Instead, he gathered up the dirty robe, walked over to the basket, and dropped it in. His movements were unlike him entirely - slow, hesitant, almost pained. He made his way back to the bed , which I had turned back for him, and once he was in I threw the bedclothes over him again. Sitting there against his soft pillows, he looked small, like a child waiting to be told a bedtime story. I sat next to him on the bed, hearing his breath grow quick, and poured a little of the pitcher of water into the bowl. I wet the cloth. I turned to him and lifted his chin with my fingertips.

Delicately, I cleaned the blood and tears from his face. This took longer than it should have, mostly because halfway through my careful tending he began to cry once more, silently, the tears rolling down and spattering against the counterpane. Once he was as clean-faced as I could make him, I stopped, and put the cloth down onto the platter. His breathing grew less steady as I waited. Eventually, he opened his eyes and looked at me. 

"Why," he said, "do you always forgive me?"

"You know the answer to that."

He shook his head convulsively. "Ever have I wondered why you simply do not tell me that you want me to leave you alone, to let you be by yourself and be happy. No matter what I do, I make your life worse. It would make the most sense if you hated me."

"No," I said. "You are my friend. You make me happy, simply by being close to me." 

He covered his face in his hands and made a tortured noise. I reached out and took his thin wrists, tugging gently. One hand felt the silk of his glove, the other his skin. They were equally soft, and the pulse in each beat equally hard.

"You are my friend," I said, once more catching his eyes. "You are my friend, whom I love dearly. I could never hate you. Not once in my life have I hated you, and I never will."

His own words, from that very afternoon. He stared at where I touched him, and then looked back up at my face. I hoped he could see my sincerity there.

“Fitz,” he said, after a moment. “I could have raped you.”

My immediate reaction was to deny it, but he interrupted me.

“I am stronger than you. You were loath to hurt me. I got as far as having you half-stripped. Had I been anyone else, you would have lashed out, is that not correct? But this loyalty, however misplaced, that binds you to me.. it stopped you from defending yourself. What if I had not been able to stop myself? What if I had gotten even further? Would you have been able to forgive-"

There he stopped himself. He was no longer crying, but I almost wished he were. Instead he looked more like he had been carved from stone. His face was blank, and he drew his hands away from mine, folding them neatly in his own lap. His manner reminded me of the mask he put on to become Lord Golden, and I had a sudden stab of fear that I would never see the Fool again - only ever a 'safe' outer shell that he chose to present to me, forever keeping himself hidden inside, stewing in his own self-loathing.

I did the only thing I could think of, and wrenched at the tie to my sleeve, pulling it up to expose my inner arm from elbow to wrist. On my dark skin, the silver fingerprints seemed to almost float, like leaves on an undisturbed pool.

"Please," I said, and he flinched to hear me say it. I wondered if I would ever be able to say please again to him without his memory bringing up an image of me pinned to a wall, begging for something neither of us were really sure of. I reached over and tugged at his hands, picking at the edge of the glove.

"I don't have the right words," I said, frustratedly, when he did not move, "and moreover it'll take less time for you to understand how I feel. Then we can be done, and I can sleep."

This, I think, was the only thing that made him do it. He dragged off the glove and reached over to me. The cool of his palm against my arm raised goosebumps on my skin even before silver brushed silver, but then-

We both jerked bodily as the connection was made. I think he cried out, or perhaps it was me, but at the time there was neither him nor me, only us, and we flooded into each other with abandon. I felt the waves of him crash over me and it should have been overwhelming and uncontrollable, but with both of us so focused on dealing with the same problem, it was like a pair of puzzle halves clicking together. As one, we reached for that afternoon.

Shame. Fear. Guilt. These came first, both of us soaked in them. 

He was ashamed that he hadn't fought it off. He was afraid he hadn't tried hard enough to resist it. He felt guilt for having wanted to touch me thus in the first place.

I was ashamed that I had reacted to him with pleasure. I was afraid for what this meant for us. I was guilty for having caused him such heartache. 

Once these emotions came to light we both reached for the other to comfort him, but I pushed something else at him - my absolute faith in him.  _ I saw you fighting. You were trying. It was my fault for not doing as you asked in the first place. You didn't hurt me. I'm not afraid of you. You say you're afraid that you could have hurt me worse - but you were the one who fought it off. You are stronger than you know. _

He shot back,  _ and weaker than I would like. But I find myself distracted. You are so afraid of yourself, and you barely know it. How do you live like this, Fitz? You feel so much and let yourself experience so little of it. Your soul is a book that you barely skim. Do you not feel yourself hurting? _

He pushed a feeling at me. I reached out for it, as though I cradled it in my mind’s palm, and turned it over and over, examining it. I could not identify it.

_ You are a mystery to yourself, Fitz. I mourn for you. What of this? _

__ Another feeling, this one of a different ‘shape’. 

_ I know this one. It is my feelings for you. _

From him, a sensation of falling, like missing a step when walking upstairs. I was suddenly awash with a flush of his excitement, tempered with restraint. 

_ Are you certain? _

_ Of course. _

_ Fitz. You feel very strongly. _

_ Of course! _

I felt his amusement and pushed back at him my curiosity and confusion. I felt him dismiss it, but not unkindly.

_ We’ve gotten distracted. _

We returned to that afternoon. Through his eyes, I watched myself be pushed against the wall and touched. Through mine he saw himself almost becoming lost in lust. His stomach turned as he felt how my heart had raced as he had leaned in, how my body had reacted as he had rolled his hips against mine. It was somehow easier to process how I felt when it was someone else feeling it.

_ I liked it, _ I realised, and he lashed out a denial with no words needed.

_ A physical reaction means nothing, _ he told me,  _ a man can become aroused at the smallest thing, never mind a warm body pressed against him. Your reaction is irrelevant. _

_ I am shocked at all that I reacted _ , I said,  _ even though you may be a man, I never considered I could - that I could find a man attractive in that way. _

_ You don’t,  _ he said firmly, but I ignored him. I pushed him into the moment that afternoon where he had licked his lips, and I had wished he would kiss me.

_ I am not so certain, _ I said.  _ I was then. I am not now. I need to think on this. We both do. We can continue this later. _

Even as I said it, our link became saturated with my exhaustion. I felt his sympathy for me, as he, too, was tired. 

I think then I had a thought to go back to my room, but this did not happen, as my next memory is of waking up in downy softness, having fallen asleep on top of his covers. He was standing by the bed, having dressed himself in day-clothes, and he had stroked my hair back from my face. This touch was what had woken me.

“Chade is looking for me,” he said softly. “I will see you later today. Fitz?”

“Mm?” I managed.

He leaned down and daringly pressed a kiss to my cheek. He went to leave then, but I caught him rather rudely by the braid that he had evidently just put in. I pulled him gently back.

“Do not kiss me on the cheek and go,” I said sleepily, “without giving me opportunity to return it.” 

And I did, placing my dry lips to his face, just to the right of his mouth. I released my fistful of gold and my head fell back to the pillow. My eyes were closing, and I was almost asleep even then, as I watched him exit the room. 

His hand was pressed to his cheek, and he was smiling.


End file.
